A day late, dollar short: a column on moms

As usual, I am a little late in publishing this week’s column . . . it should have run last week. That said, just like every day is Kids Day, every Sunday should be Moms Day.

* * *

While moms have held a special place in the hearts of all who ever were, there was a time when there was no “Mother’s Day.” According to my sources, the driving for

We can thank Anna Jarvis for pushing hard to get moms the props they deserve.

ce behind Mother’s Day was Anna Jarvis. Anna must have loved her dear old mom, ‘cuz she organized observances in Grafton, W.Va., and Philadelphia on May 10, 1908. That was 109 years ago.

As the annual celebration spread around the country, Jarvis began lobbying politicians to set aside a day to honor mothers. She finally succeeded in 1914, when Congress designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
And, the rest is history.

* * *

So, I wanted to know how many moms there are across these fertile plains commonly referred to as The United States of America. Here is what Pew research published in 2014. Click here for the latest from Pew on Moms In America.
“There are about 85 million mothers in America, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau estimate. Our analysis of census data shows that the share of mothers with kids younger than 18 at home has declined. Today, about a third (34%) of women ages 18-64 have young children at home; in 1960, 52% did. And women are having children at a later age than they used to. In 2012, the average age of a first-time mother was 25.8 years, up from 21.4 years in 1970.”

* * *

In 1976, the percentage of women between the ages of 40 and 44 who were moms was 90 percent. In 2001, that percentage dropped to 81 percent.

* * *

How many kids are U.S. moms having these days? According to the same research at Pew, the average is 1.9 kids per mom. When I last checked this information (a decade ago), I wrote, “According the government, the average is 2.1. Nothing personal, but I’d hate to be the .1 kid.”

* * *

So, I hopped on the old Google express and typed “how many children are born in the United States.” From the National Center for Health Statistics (a sub organization of the Centers for Disease Control), in 2015 . . .
Number of births: 3,978,497
Birth rate: 12.4 per 1,000 population
Fertility rate: 62.5 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years
Percent born low birth-weight: 8.1%
Percent born preterm: 9.6%
Percent unmarried: 40.3%
Mean age at first birth: 26.4

* * *

Get this: Number of live births to mothers age 15-19 years: 229,715.

* * *

So, when are kids born? Back to the old government stats: The highest percentages of births occurred during the morning and midday hours.
Births on Saturday and Sunday were more likely to occur in the late evening and early morning hours than births Monday through Friday.

* * *

Hey, prospective moms — the odds of you delivering “ multiples” here in the good ol’ U.S. of A? The statistics show from 2015:
Number of twin births: 133,155
Number of triplet births: 3,871
Number of quadruplet births: 228
Number of quintuplets and other higher order births: 24
That works out to a ‘twin birth’ rate of 33.5 per 1,000 live births in the U.S. And, the ‘triplet or higher’ order birth rate is 103.6 per 100,000 live births.

* * *

According to BabyCenter.com, the biggest month for babies being born is August.
“In 2013 more newborns arrived in August than in any other month. The second, third, and fourth most popular birthday months were July, October, and September, in that order.”

* * *

In 2016, the most popular names for newborns were, Olivia for the girls and Lucas for the boys. Ava and Mia were numbers two and three for the chicks, and Liam and Noah for the young dudes. I went to another site (back to BabyCenter.com) and looked for the name Donald. I have been telling my kids forever, it is a dying name. Yup. Donald was the 488th most popular name for a boy in 2016. What is worse, Donald was beat out in popularity by the likes of Kamden, Dexter, Remy and Albert. Dang, I hate not being first! (Not, too competitive, am I?)

* * *

Like most guys, I have “THE BEST MOM EVER!” That said, while I was present and with Mom on her day this year, we never can say it enough. Love you, Mom.